“I brought a key (the camera), opened the door to the secret
passage (the mirror), woke up my mythical archetypes, and lured them out into
the world.”

I looked into the mirror, photographed myself, and created
new images through my imagination. In other words, the mirror became the space
where I transformed into both the director and the actor on stage. Dancing, and
at the same time photographing myself. My daydreaming started to transform my
talent into magic, which allowed infinite metamorphoses. “I” became expanded
into “I”s ever more numerous, and then I went someplace that I will call the
“imaginative realm.”

I found 99 other “me”s. 99 is a theoretical number that
denotes myself as a whole to be 100 minus one — my present self.

During the process, I discovered androgyny (male and female
in one body) hidden in myself. Heroic, warrior-like, aggressive, subjective,
godly images were classified into “male images”. Human, mythical, artificial,
passive, inclusive, objective images were classified into “female images”. The
remaining images were classified as “composite images” — neither god nor human,
a mediating entity like a spirit or a fairy. All co-exist and are interrelated.

I am calling my work method “image-telling” — a new genre.
It embraces “storytelling” but it is separate at the same time. I believe that
“image-telling” can go beyond storytelling, which is based upon linguistic
imagination. Image-telling is the same as presenting spectators with the tools
for imagination — a new musical instrument — instead of giving them an already
completed narrative.

Therefore, there cannot be a fixed story in image-telling.
It provides an opportunity for daydreaming and it opens the door to the
imagination. For that reason, I decided to use the word “variation” in the
title of my work. Variety and subjectivity are central to my conception of
image-telling.

After about 99 images, I will walk back along the road that
I have traveled up to this point and rethink the power of the imagination, the
meaning of the images, and their relationship to myself.

— Youngho Kang

Editor's Note: We discovered Youngho Kang's work at LensCulture Fotofest 2013. Along with the still images above, you can enjoy (and learn a lot from) the behind-the-scenes video of this project:

Long before iPhones and Instagram: 60 years of one Dutch girl's "selfies" firing a gun into the camera! Outrageous lifetime photo concept — watch her age in the same pose — a split second after she pulls the trigger of her rifles — from age 16 to 88.

"As within, so without"—these two series, though completely unlike in subject matter, are joined by their attempt to illuminate the ineffable, to dissolve the barriers between what we see with our eyes and what lies beneath, beyond.

The town of Tranquillity, California—tiny as it is—thrums with deep unease. First, step into this mysterious world, then read our exclusive interview with the photographer (and Aperture Portfolio Prize runner-up).